ANNOUNCEMENT: The Autumn Release (and an appeal)

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Greetings fans of Europa Barbarorum!

If you've been following the Twitter/Facebook feeds, or indeed have been involved in the pre-release testing of the iterations of version 2.03, you'll know we've been planning a major new release of Europa Barbarorum II for the summer. In the spirit of full disclosure, our target was the 23rd August, marking the first anniversary of the last major release, 2.01. We had an internal change freeze set for the end of this month so that we could focus on final testing and building an installer to ensure a seamless experience.

However, upon review of the progress on unit creation, we don't feel that an August release would reflect well upon the balance of focus between factions. Most of the new units that are ready belong to just one roster, and it would be unfair to the remaining factions not to be updated until the next major release. Furthermore, we are still extremely constrained on modelling resources and there is only so much that our small number of modellers can do.

With that in mind, we are postponing the release to the autumn, most likely the end of September.

I know this will be a disappointment to many people, but we thought it better to make it public sooner, rather than later. We feel openness is better than simply overshooting the deadline and keeping silent. This will give us another four or five weeks to trial some more gameplay features, but more importantly build the new units that everyone is looking forward to. We'd appreciate people's patience in this regard, bear with us and you will see the mod you're hoping for.

Which brings me onto the second part of this announcement. What would be really helpful is if we had more 3D modellers, especially those with experience of M2TW modding, to help with assembly of new units. We have a pretty extensive collection of the parts needed to build many of our planned units, but not enough people who can put them all together in order to make them real. I know this isn't a glamorous task, and many modellers prefer to make their own meshes, textures and so on from scratch, but this isn't necessary to reach our unit goal. We need people willing to do the legwork of stitching together existing parts under direction from our historians as to what is required. Every unit has a concept thread with photos, illustrations, quotations from text and a breakdown of what is needed, and what current units have valid parts. If we got just five people willing to commit to assembling 10 units each, for example, that would make a big dent in the outstanding units. And yes, we have that many units ready to be assembled!

If you are an experienced M2TW modeller, or know someone who is and could lend a hand, please get in touch with us via our recruitment thread, or PM me or anubis88 directly. That doesn’t mean to say we’re not still interested in enthusiastic people without modding experience who want to learn how; just that for the autumn release it will go much smoother with people who already know what they're doing.

As ever, thank you for your support and remember to read more history.

- The Europa Barbarorum II Team

is there a compendium on software to download and tutorials etc. etc or point me in the right direction if theres a tutorial on the forums that is. As I would love to help out with modelling but very lost

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Originally Posted by Lizardo

is there a compendium on software to download and tutorials etc. etc or point me in the right direction if theres a tutorial on the forums that is. As I would love to help out with modelling but very lost

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The full list of tools we use:

- 3DSTUDIO MAX 2009/2010 - this one is very important because our MESH editor (look below) is meant to work with 3DSMAX

- johnwhile's 3DSTUDIO MAX UTILITIES - this is a must have because it makes sure that we keep a general uniformization of procedures, used to import/export .mesh models(used by M2TW)

- KnightErrant's GOAT 1.1 - this one is necessary if you use Milkshape, used to convert .mesh models(used by M2TW) to .ms3d

- zarathos's M2TW Modeler's Toolbox, is a newer tool which replaces KnightErrant's GOAT and provides more utility functions

- wilddog's IWTE, used for settlement/vegetation models and other utility functions

For assembly, it's only 3DS Max you need, since we have textures and all the other things already.

Modelling:
- Basics of 3ds max
- Skin modifier
- Skin modifier 2
- Milkshape/tools tutorial for units

Lots more tutorials can be found here.

Thanks for letting us now. Personally if that means EB2 can keep it's amazing quality I don't mind waiting some months.

As for the appeal, I have been making 3d models and textures for different games but I don't have any free time due to university atm. I may have time after September though.
Il2 1946 -> buildings and ships , textures
Oblivion -> some scripts ,models and textures
Star Wars EaW -> a few models and parameters changed
Rome TW , Medieval 1 TW -> Mostly changes in the EDU and such files but never released them anywhere
Medieval 2 TW -> EDU, projectiles, some fooling around with the stats.

I realise that's not exactly experience in M2TW modeling for units but if you have any need for someone with the above experience after September and I get some time I'll be happy to enlist then.

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Originally Posted by Not_a_Strategist_yet

Il2 1946 -> buildings and ships , textures

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That sounds good, I could need some help with settlement modding, so modelling/texturing buildings could be useful aswell.

I hope to hear from you in the future, good luck with the uni stuff!

i want to help out now

Good to hear updates. Better a missed release date than a cloak of secrecy. We're waiting patiently for the update, keep us informed.

We've made an alteration to our unit-creation workflow; now we also need 2D artists to do texturing. What we need are people with skills in Photoshop/GIMP; it's a bonus if you already have some experience of creating textures for units. But really it's just knowledge of that software and some artistic flair - everything else you can learn.

Does that sound like you? Or do you know someone who can do that?

2D texturing? Yes I my friend is adept with photoshop yes i still would like to help out aswell with it

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Originally Posted by Lizardo

2D texturing? Yes I my friend is adept with photoshop yes i still would like to help out aswell with it

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Please apply with some examples of your work here. If you have anything in particular you like to work on (weapons, armour, helmets, body parts, clothing, etc) then specify.

Is there any news on this? The only thing I'm seeing reported is a series of script iterations.

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Originally Posted by Maeran

Is there any news on this? The only thing I'm seeing reported is a series of script iterations.

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If you're referring to the testing patches, they're significantly more than "script iterations". Recruitment, battle mechanics, BAI, CAI, diplomacy, the odd UI fix and many other things are covered there.

Fixes, fixes, fixes.

A release was announced for August. It is now November. Nothing has been announced since that hasn't been low-key.

I do appreciate that all the testing patches are building toward something, but any campaign fizzles out by 200BC, mostly due to lack of units.
Since extra units was what I expected from the August release, I am surprised that nothing is being mentioned 3 months on.

https://twitter.com/EBTeam

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Originally Posted by Maeran

Fixes, fixes, fixes.

A release was announced for August. It is now November. Nothing has been announced since that hasn't been low-key.

I do appreciate that all the testing patches are building toward something, but any campaign fizzles out by 200BC, mostly due to lack of units.
Since extra units was what I expected from the August release, I am surprised that nothing is being mentioned 3 months on.

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Aside from the fact that there have been regular unit previews on the Twitter/Facebook feeds, have you actually played any of the testing releases? The changes to just about every underlying mechanic in the game are hardly "low key".

I totally agree with you on that, QuintusSertorius. I briefly played EB2 right after the first release but ceased playing fairly quickly due to a mixture of time constraints fand technical issues.
This Sunday I gave it a new try and I feel the game has developed a lot. Oh and looking at Twitter, I am confident that we will soon also see a number of units released missed dearly yet.
Keep up the good work team!